Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury has devoted many years as an inspirational champion for sustainable peace and development and ardently advancing the cause of the global movement for the culture of peace that has energized civil society all over the world. As a career diplomat he has been Permanent Representative to United Nations, President of the UN Security Council, President of UNICEF Board, UN Under-Secretary-General, the Senior Special Advisor to the UN General Assembly President, and recipient of many awards including the 2015 Gandhi-King-Ikeda Community Builders Prize of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, Morehouse College, the U Thant Peace Award, UNESCO Gandhi Gold Medal for Culture of Peace and Spirit of the UN Award and University of Massachusetts Boston Chancellor’s Medal for Global Leadership for Peace. Ambassador Chowdhury has a wealth of experience in the critical issues of our time - peace, sustainable development, and human rights. He served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York from 1996 to 2001 and as the Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations, responsible for the most vulnerable countries of the world from 2002 to 2007. Ambassador Chowdhury is a member of the Advisory Council of IMPACT Leadership 21 and is the first recipient of the IMPACT Leadership 21’s Global Summit Frederick Douglass Award Honoring Men Who Are Champions For Women's Advancement in October 2013. He is a founding co-chair of the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organisation (IESCO) with headquarters in China and is a member of the Advisory Council of the National Peace Academy in US. He is the honorary chair of the International Day of Peace NGO Committee at the UN, New York and chairman of the Global Forum on Human Settlements, both since 2008. He has also been the chair of the International Drafting Committee on the Human Right to Peace, an initiative coordinated from Geneva and was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the New York City Peace Museum.

Avon Mattison is a Peacebuilding and Inter-Organisational Consultant, Advisor and Mentor with over three decades’ experience. She works with innovative leaders, groups and organisations on the “frontline” building Cultures of Peace inter-generationally and inter-culturally for future generations. She is Founder and President of Pathways To Peace (PTP), an international peacebuilding, educational and consulting organisation.

PTP has Consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and is an official Peace Messenger of the United Nations (UN). PTP is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation. Avon is also a Partner in the consulting proprietorship, Pathways Consulting. She is originator of Creative/Integrative Decision-Making(sm) in 1961, a process applied to the purpose, principles and organising strategies in diverse fields. A U.S. Foreign Service diplomat for three years serving the European Community, Avon has served as special advisor to United Nations Conferences, renowned international leaders, and emerging youth leaders.

A Summa Cum Laude graduate in political science and international communications. She serves on the Advisory Councils/Boards of several international organizations and has been quoted in numerous publications worldwide.

Through Pathways To Peace, she created the CULTURE OF PEACE INITIATIVE (CPI), in 1983 in colleagueship with former UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller. This local/global Peacebuilding Initiative unites the strengths of over 4,000 international organisations and focuses co-operative activities. Avon coordinates PACEM – Pathways Consulting, Educating and Mentoring. www.cultureofpeaceinitiative.org